Judgments? More Like Sadistic Summoners
by A Song of Purity
Summary: A darker, more angsty take on LoL's champion reflections: the trials and tribulations of champions as they go through the Hall of Reflections to join the League - memories best left forgotten and possibilities best left unexplored, and maybe a few mental breakdowns along the way. Complete breaches of privacy await. Those damn Summoners are a nasty little bunch, aren't they?
1. I: Ahri's Always Hungry

**I've always been a little disappointed with the lack of lore in some of the champions' lore pages. I also enjoy writing angsty scenes, though I'm terrible at it. Anyways, I read some judgments online and thought, wouldn't it be a neat idea to do this for the champions I'm interested in or the ones that have massive backstory potential? **

**First up is Ahri, because her lore makes her seem a little too shallow for my tastes. And also because she's sexy as hell. And because I had a funny idea for why she's named "Ahri". Enjoy! **

* * *

**[JUDGMENT:AHRI]**

**Candidate: Ahri, the Nine-Tailed Fox**

**Observations:**

She sweeps into the hall with an inhuman grace, head held high and golden eyes not quite disdainful but not quite humble. She is beautiful and she glows with ethereal luminosity, and even the nine sleek ivory-furred tails swish from side to side in sweet seduction. All attention is drawn to her as soon as she steps into the building.

Her gaze – a haughtiness that would shame aristocrats into humility – roves around the room but does not land on anything in particular. One of the men lounging in the waiting area wolf-whistles at her, but the two night-black ears on her head do not even flick in acknowledgement. When a willowy blue-haired woman carrying a strange instrument nearly runs into her, the glowing golden eyes seem to almost soften—and then they glow with a different kind of aloofness, a cold envy and a desperate longing that burns behind the amber warmth that most people see when they look upon the nine-tailed fox.

The blue-haired woman smiles gently at her, nods to her, and continues on her way.

For the merest of seconds, Ahri is stunned. No human has so easily shown her kindness before. Had the blue-haired woman not seen her tails? She sniffs, her molten eyes clearing as she continues to make her way to the double doors at the end of the hall.

_The truest opponent lies within,_ the inscription above the doors reads. For the slightest moment, the lithe she-fox hesitates. What if the council sees the forlorn little animal that lies under her human skin? And then, without missing a beat, Ahri strides on, the tiny falter almost unnoticeable.

**Reflection:**

The doors opened, and Ahri stepped into the darkness. She couldn't see or hear or even _smell_ anything. For a human, the lack of sensory stimulus might have been normal, but she was…

_No! I am _human_, _the golden-eyed beauty told herself firmly as she took one more step into the darkness, and then another, and another. "Why do you want to join the League?" a disembodied voice boomed around her. She didn't bat an eyelid.

"I want to become human," Ahri answered confidently, "and your precious League has already given me promise that they will help me find a way if I use my skills to aid them."

There was a pause. "What's the real reason you want to join the League?"

Ahri faltered. "W-what?" she exclaimed. "I just told you! I want to be _human_!" Suddenly, she felt dizzy, and her knees buckled. Falling to the floor, the fox-woman threw her arms out in front of her to break her fall, only to realize that she wasn't falling. Blinking, she vaguely recognized the forest around her, and she raised her head to sniff cautiously at the air, a habit so familiar to her that she didn't realize what she was doing. There was a metallic tang in the air that she recognized as fresh blood.

She froze as she stepped around a tree and found two wolves tearing at a freshly-killed deer, and suddenly, she was aware of the gnawing, searing _hunger_ in the pit of her belly. _Meat!_ But as she approached, intending to take a haunch of meat from her wild brothers, the wolves hissed and snarled and bared their teeth at her. _What is this? _Could they not recognize the queen of the forest when they saw her anymore?

The nine-tailed fox held her hands out peacefully, frowning as the gray wolf barked aggressively at her while the brown one circled her. "I," the fox-woman said, but it came out more like a growl than like any human speech she had ever heard. Her throat was uncomfortable and new and not at all easy to use to make those beautiful syllables of speech that she had longed to be able to speak. The human vocal chords the man had gifted her with could not articulate her native tongue, either.

"Ah," she tried again, and this time her sweet, sweet voice was able to draw out the sound without turning it guttural. Forgetting the hunger for a moment, the she-fox smiled in triumph. "Ah," she repeated, refocusing on the wolves in front of her. _How dare they disrespect the queen of the forest? They will know their place. _The wolves approached, still growling, as she harnessed the new - yet somehow familiar - magic power that the old man had given her in addition to her almost-human form. The she-fox stepped to the right, avoiding the circling brown wolf, and attacked. _They will not dare to be so insolent to me again_, the forest matriarch thought balefully as glowing blue energy exploded in front of her.

The two wolves yelped as blue foxfire splashed on their fur, but her control of the magic was not strong enough to do damage. The fox-woman cried out as the gray one recovered and jumped her, sinking its teeth deep into her left forearm. _No!_ the she-fox thought, struggling to throw the beast off. The pain was blinding, fiery, agonizing - it surprised her and immobilized her. Why had such a juvenile attack thrown her? Were humans really this fragile? Her skin was like paper, it seemed, and her furious kicks seemed to have no impact on the wolf as she struggled. Another shot of blue fire jumped into existence around her, but she was flailing, and the ball of flame streaked harmlessly to the right of the gray wolf when she released it.

The brown wolf was stalking her now, circling around her as the gray wolf released her. Something was making a reedy, high-pitched whine, and belatedly, the fox-woman realized that she was the one who was making the sound. Blood dripped down her body as the brown wolf darted in and butted her into a tree. The whine cut off abruptly._ No!_ the she-fox protested groggily as she tried to recover from the collision.

Then, suddenly, her ears picked up a different kind of whine - a high-pitched whistle. Instinctively, she ducked, and there were two thunks and a loud yowl of pain. When she looked up again, there were two white-fletched arrows in the gray wolf's flank, and it gave one last yelp before retreating. The brown wolf howled as an arrow sprouted from its forepaw, and it limped off to join its brother. The she-fox was dizzy. So dizzy, and she was still so hungry. Why...

The last thing she remembered before passing out was a tall cloaked figure standing over her and murmuring soft human words to her.

When she woke up, she didn't recognize where she was. She was lying on something soft - the humans called it a bed, she remembered - and her left arm felt oddly stiff. Sniffing the air, she detected the scent of another human somewhere nearby. There was a door to her right, and four walls around her and one above and below her. Was she in a house?

"Oh, good, you're awake," a gentle male voice said, startling her. Instinct made the she-fox hiss and bare her teeth, and only then did she realize that there was a human sitting near the bed. "You must be hungry," he said as the she-fox stared hard at him, and at the word hungry, the empty hole in her stomach made itself known again. "Wait here - I'll get you something to eat. Don't move, please. You'll open up your side again."

The she-fox could only blink as the man went through the door and vanished from her sight. "Ah," she tried, pleased when she found she could still make that gentle, sweet sound. Her entire left side throbbed with pain, and she raised her left arm, surprised at the strips of white cloth that seemed to have replaced her skin. Her stomach made a loud gurgling noise, startling her. Her ears stood up straight.

A delicious scent was approaching her. The fox-woman's mouth watered as the man reentered the room, carrying a bowl of...something. She didn't know what it was, but she _did_ know that this was how humans prepared food. _Food_. _FOOD._ The man set the plate down on a small stand beside the bed, along with a strange metal stick that had a round indent on its end. "Do wild kami like you eat human food?" the man mused as he sat back down in the chair and picked the metal stick up and dipped it into the bowl. "It's only vegetable broth - I wasn't sure if kami ate meat, being protectors of the forest and all. Here, open your mouth."

"Ah," the she-fox said, trying to tell him that she was not a_ kami_, she was the damn _queen _of the entire _forest_, but then she scented the food again and she forgot her protests. The man slid the metal stick gently into her open mouth and she sucked greedily on the thick, savory broth that accompanied it. When he made to pull the metal stick back, her eyes widened and she clamped her jaw on it frantically. She wanted more food, not a metal stick, but it had given her food! She was so _hungry_...

The man laughed, and the she-fox felt an unfamiliar stirring in her belly and her face grew flush. "I need the spoon to feed you more soup, kami. You're a hungry little thing, aren't you? What's your name?"

This was a question that the she-fox recognized, but what was a spoon? _Hungry,_ she thought desperately as the man tried to wiggle the metal stick free. She refused to let go of it. _I just need to be able to tell him that I'm hungry. _"Ah," the she-fox said, inadvertently releasing the metal stick when she opened her mouth to speak. _Hungry. _She had never said the word before, so she settled on the last syllable, which seemed the easiest to articulate. "Ri." The fox-woman grinned, baring her fangs.

"Ah, ree," she repeated, pleased that she was able to communicate with this human. The man had clearly gotten her meaning because he fed her another stickful of that heavenly liquid food. She realized now that he was using the metal stick to scoop the soup up, so this time, she obediently released the metal from between her mouth after making sure she'd gotten every last drop.

"Ahri," the man repeated, smiling as he fed her another stickful of liquid food. "A beautiful name for a beautiful woman."

_Name?_ The she-fox was puzzled - names were human things, not something that had been part of her life as the queen of the forest. Maybe in order to become fully human, she needed a name. What had the man called her? Ahri? That seemed easy enough to say. But she didn't get a chance to try it out, too busy devouring the soup.

The bowl was empty before she was full. Her stomach wasn't hungry anymore, but she still felt...empty. Like she needed something to fill herself with or the empty void would consume her itself...

Abruptly, the she-fox was very aware of an appealing scent rolling off of the man sitting by her bed. No - scent was not the right word. Her nose wasn't picking this up - it was more like a dark, mouthwatering..._aura_ of some sort. Unthinkingly, she reached out for it with her right arm, driven by her burning hunger, and somehow _captured_ it in the palm of her hand using the magic that the old man had given her.

Forgetting everything but the glowing sphere in her hand, she devoured the orb desperately, feeling the energy slide through her body. She sighed contentedly as the hunger receded enough to satiate her but not enough to forget.

When she looked up to thank the man for finally making the hunger go away, she found herself staring at a lifeless body with white eyes and slack jaw. _What!_ the she-fox exclaimed, sniffing the air. _What happened to him? _All she had done was...oh. Had she consumed the man's life force? His soul?

Feeling refreshed, she rolled out of bed slowly and stretched languorously, satisfied that her hunger had finally - for the most part - gone away since that old mage had blessed her with her human body. "Ahri," she said to no one, feeling the name roll off her tongue with a pleasant sound. "Ahri."

Then she frowned, feeling a strange wave of some unknown emotion rolling over her. This man had saved her from those wolves, and she repaid him by taking his soul - what kind of cruel monster was she? She gripped her head, not understanding the regret she had never felt before. Wasn't this something she had done regularly in the past? Hunted when she felt hungry and taken a life to eat? So why was she so affected by it now?

The man's mouth moved suddenly, and she jumped away, screaming. "Why do you want to join the League?" the corpse asked, and everything came rushing back to her. This was her first soulsteal, her first vampirism of many to come. How had those accursed summoners gotten into her memories? This was one of her most sacred moments: the day she received a _name_. How _dare_ they intrude on her like that? She _was_ still queen of the forest -

"Why do you want to join the League?" the corpse repeated insistently, staring at her with creepy, milky-white eyeballs.

Ahri slid down to the floor, shaking as the guilt hit her. Just like it always did after every kill. The strength of it was overwhelming, and she wrapped her arms around her knees, curling up into a ball with her tails splayed around her. This time, it was worse - her first kill, and she was no longer able to hide herself behind a farce of charm.

"I just want the hunger to s-stop," Ahri sobbed, her shoulders heaving as she grieved for the man whose soul she had just consumed. Becoming fully human would stop all of this madness. Becoming fully human meant she wouldn't have to steal any more souls just to stay the half-human, half-fox abomination she was now. "Just - just make it _go away_!"

The world around her melted away into blackness, leaving her alone and overcome with emotion. "How does it feel, exposing your mind?" the voice whispered, echoing around her. Doors in front of her opened, bathing the Hall of Reflection in golden light, and Ahri stood up shakily.

"Too..._human_," the she-fox admitted, barely audible and too shaken to be furious at the invasion of her privacy as she composed herself. She'd passed - that was what mattered, so she resolutely pushed this entire _test_ out of her mind. She was a champion in the League of Legends now. Putting on her trademark half-smirk, the she-fox sauntered out through the doors with inhuman grace, her nine sleek ivory-furred tails swishing from side to side in sweet seduction.

* * *

**And that's Ahri (ah-lways hung-ri). I was going to make this alphabetical, but then I decided nah, it would be more fun to do my favorites, then my friends' favorites. Shaco is next.**

**Edit: the number of times I have had to revise this chapter to change "she-wolf" to "she-fox" is over 9000  
**


	2. II: Shaco's Always Laughing

**And here's Shaco, requested by one of my teammates who jungles with him. This was fun to write - Shaco basically has no explicit lore so I had a lot of freedom with this one. It was hard not to run too long, though.**

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[JUDGMENT:SHACO]

**Candidate: Shaco, the Demon Jester**

**Observations:**

His laughter precedes him.

It is not a jolly sound, nor does it seem entirely human. As it shouldn't be - for the owner of the laugh doesn't seem entirely human, either, though he _is_ jolly by profession. The things that Shaco laughs at, though, might not be the most appropriate things to laugh at. For normal people, anyways - then again, Shaco isn't exactly normal.

He pops into appearance suddenly in the middle of the room with a barking cackle, spinning around gleefully in the atrociously colorful attire he wears and taking a sweeping bow. A few of the champions passing by humor him with applause, though they sense that something about this joker is...a little _off_. And maybe they feel that if they do not laugh and clap, they will never do so again.

His maniacal giggling echoes off the walls, reverberating down the length of the hallway as he skips and spins towards the double doors at the end of the hallway. "I _love_ playing mind games," he exclaims in delight when he reads the inscription above the doors, and does a little shuffling jig as he waits for them to open. He licks his dagger every so often and tosses it up in the air, catches it, then sends it chaining through the air like lightning at someone nearby. They flinch, and the dagger passes straight through them and vanishes. "Gotcha, gotcha!" Shaco sniggers as he reveals the _real_ dagger still in his hand.

The doors swing open and the jester slips inside before they can hinge further than a few inches apart. He leaves behind a small jack-in-the-box that boasts a wider and more sinister sneer than Shaco himself does.

**Reflection: **

Laughing at the thought of the surprise the next candidate would get outside the door, Shaco skipped around in the darkness, waiting for the summoners to start with him. He grew bored within seconds and licked his dagger again - he liked to refresh the poison as often as possible. You never knew when you were going to need a good laugh. "Hellooooo!" the jester called, boredom turning into impatience. "Come out and play-yay, little summoners!" His giggling never once ceased as he started tossing his dagger up and catching it on the way down.

Then, for some _extremely _odd reason, he missed the dagger on the way down, and in the darkness of the room, he couldn't find the blade on the ground. His grin faltered and his giggle turned into a confused bubbling laugh when, after a few seconds of searching on his hands and knees, he couldn't locate the dagger. Then he shrugged, growing impatient again. He could always just find a new blade. And new ones were _shiny_.

When he straightened back up, Shaco was standing in a room. His giggling cut off abruptly as he recognized where he was. Not a room - a cell. A place he had spent the first thirteen years of his life in. Oh, these summoners were _cruel. _He had to get out. _Now_.

He tried to test the door with his hands - he could open _anything_ if he knew how it worked - but his hands were several pounds heavier than he remembered them, and they clinked.

Looking down, Shaco found himself chained to the wall. His ankles were bound. His whole body ached from having been shackled in the same position for days on end, and his throat felt like a desert made out of sandpaper. "H-help me," he rasped out, hoping there was someone on the other side of the door.

"Shut up in there!" The thundering voice was accompanied by a loud crash of metal on stone that had the young boy cringing and trying to cover his ears to shield them from the noise, but his chains weren't long enough to get his arms past his ribcage. Shaco leaned against the wall and shut his eyes tightly, willing himself not to cry.

"Why do we even keep that thing alive?" a second voice snorted from outside his dimly lit cell. "Demon spawn, it is. And this entire area smells like piss and shit because of it."

"Master's orders," the thundering voice replied, this time at a normal volume. Shaco sank down, letting himself hang by the wrists as he sniffled, continuing to listen to the guards discuss him. This wasn't anything new - the insults had been there for his entire life. "I mean, we can't exactly let the thing run around, can we? Demonspawn with poison saliva on the loose would be fine and dandy. At least we got the damn warlocks who made him."

He knew his parents were dead, but that didn't make it any easier to hear so callously tossed out. "At least he tells good jokes. And his magic tricks are pretty useful when Lord Aman needs a bit of extra entertainment at those dinner parties of his." There was banging at his cell door. "Oi, Demonspawn! Tell us a good joke!"

The last time Shaco had refused one of the guards had been six years ago. He'd been seven, and too thirsty to make the effort to talk. He'd also been beaten within an inch of his life. "Why don't seagulls want to live in the bay?" the thirteen-year-old choked out, hacking and coughing. He paused for dramatic effect while the guards waited for the punch line. "Because then they'd be bay-gulls," he finished miserably. _Why do they hate me? Is it because my parents were practicers of black magic? I never did anything wrong..._

The guards outside chortled, but then the banging continued. "Hey, Demonspawn, why aren't you laughing at your own joke?" Shaco slumped even further in his crucifix-like pose as he giggled weakly, but that seemed to satisfy the guards enough.

An immeasurable amount of time passed, and the next thing that the young jester was aware of was a commotion outside of his cell door. Then his door was flung open with a booming _crack_ and blinding light streamed in. He knew what this meant. "Feed him and clean him up," Lord Aman commanded, and Shaco was unchained, dragged out of the cell, and tossed to the serving women in the lord's manor. At least _they_ didn't seem to hate him. In fact, they seemed to pity him.

"Poor underfed thing," one of them - a brown-haired woman who was quite stout - clucked disapprovingly as she tipped his head back and trickled water into his parched mouth. She checked him from gulping it all down greedily, only allowing him sips. When she took the cup away from his lips, he was still parched. "Come on, let's get some food in it."

_Him,_ Shaco wanted to say. _I'm not an it. _But the words didn't come. They never did. In the next hour or so, he was dressed in garish colors with matching garish shoes and his face was painted white with cakey makeup. "Thank you," he said instead to the serving ladies in the kitchen, most of whom ignored him as two guards led him up the stairs and to the large ballroom where Lord Aman received his guests.

Tonight was no different than the last thirteen years of his life. Shaco plastered a clownish grin on his face and danced around the room as Lord Aman's guests enjoyed an ostentatious dinner, stopping to entertain young noble-born children with magic tricks and obliging drunk men with raunchy jokes.

"Why do men never win a fight against Syndra?" he would say, and wait until the table was done guessing, and then he would finish, "Because she knows how to handle balls!" And the whole table, usually tipsy or drunk, would guffaw heartily and he would move on.

His next one was a favorite among the rich men. "Everybody in the world knows how materialistic those in_suffer_able nobles are," he'd start, tapping the head of the nearest noble-born man knowingly as the table chuckled. "Why, there was once a lord so concerned with his wealth that when a tree blew over during a storm one night and crashed through the roof of his house, he didn't even notice that the falling debris had cut his left arm straight off until one of his servants told him. You know what he said then?" Then Shaco would pause for a second and lean in dramatically towards the eagerly waiting table of guests. " 'Oh no! My Doran's Ring was on that hand!" And the entire table would break down laughing.

_Just a day in the life of Shaco,_ the jester tried to joke to himself, forcing himself to laugh. He knew that as soon as this dinner - the same as all the other dinners he had performed at before - was over, he would be locked back up in an instant...

...Until one of the dinner guests pulled out a dagger and asked Shaco to do a trick with it.

The jester froze as the large man handed it to him and whispered conspiratorially, as if they were long-time friends, "Look, boy - I know Lord Aman doesn't like weapons in the household, especially at dinner, but my lady wife and her friends are _dying_ for some _real_ entertainment, you know what I mean?" He waggled his eyebrows at Shaco, winking at him. The women at his table were giggling girlishly, looking at him expectantly as the jester never once stopped chuckling and smiling.

Something snapped in him.

"Our little secret," Shaco whispered back to the very drunk man and winked at one of the women, who blushed as he licked the length of the very small dagger. He spun the dagger in a circle around his hands, tossing it up casually and spinning around before catching it on the way down. His parents had made sure to create him with unequaled dexterity and some familiarity with weapons - thank the gods for that. He received tumultuous applause as he bowed, giggling, though in earnest this time. That was the most fun he'd had, _ever_.

Shaco was still giggling when he sank the blade into its owner's windpipe. It made a funny squelching sound as he pulled it free, which made him laugh even harder. The absurd, horrified expressions on the women's faces around him sent him into hysterics as he stabbed the woman sitting next to the man in the back before anyone had really realized what was going on. Then the remaining women screamed and tried to flee, but the ballroom was too cluttered with tables and chairs and food and people for them to get anywhere.

For some reason, the young jester found the ensuing confusion hilarious. People were knocking into each other and tripping over themselves comically, and Lord Aman's face was so red it was a tomato. Shaco giggled at that thought - a tomato on top of Lord Aman's neck instead of a face. "Guards!" Aman was shrieking. "Destroy that Demonspawn! Get the people out safely!"

Several men in armor were coming for him. Shaco cackled gleefully, shouting, "Would you like to see a magic trick?" He didn't wait for their answers. He concentrated hard, harder than he ever had before, and suddenly there were two of him standing side by side. The guards shouted in surprise, drawing up short as he squealed in triumph and danced a little jig on top of a table. "It worked," he sang in a lilting voice, "it worked, it _wooooorked_!"

The next few minutes were all a blur, and all Shaco could remember was how _funny_ the guards' expressions were after he'd stabbed them all in the back, his poison melting through their metal armor. "What did the ocean say to the beach?" Shaco giggled as he slit the throat of a blubbering noble-born man. "It _didn't_ - it just waved!" He laughed at his own wit as he danced from table to table, catching Lord Aman's dinner guests one by one. The only thing Shaco really remembered was how _funny_ the whole thing was. Why didn't people do things like this more often?

Then Lord Aman himself was in front of him, trying to escape, and Shaco squawked in glee as the man tripped over a banana peel left by one of his guests. "Would you like to see a magic trick, my lord?" the jester crowed jovially as he nicked Aman's shoulder with the extremely bloody dagger. "Or maybe a joke?" A cut on Aman's cheek. "What do you call a bear with no teeth?" A shallow cut on Aman's leg. "A gummy bear!" Another incision on Aman's left arm.

Three bad jokes later, Shaco flipped away and hooted in mirthful appreciation of the work of art he had carved Lord Aman into. "Look, my lord!" the jester tittered in delight. "Now you look like you're wearing armor!"

"What...are you?" the mutilated man sobbed hoarsely on the floor, bleeding out. Shaco thought it was hilarious that the carpet was made of red cloth - no one would need to wash the bloodstains out!

"I'm Shaco, the Demonspawn," Shaco whooped, dancing around. Then he stopped and thought about it for a second - that name didn't have a good ring to it. "I'm Shaco, the Demon Jester," the young boy amended, cackling happily at the name he'd made for himself as he skipped around on top of a table, smashing plates and kicking goblets of wine to the floor.

"Shaco the Demon Jester, why do you want to join the League?" Lord Aman asked, and Shaco came to a screeching halt as everything crashed back into place in his mind. His immediate and first thought was _because I don't know where else to go._ His laughter faltered, but only for a second. Then he started laughing again.

"Isn't killing people a _riot_?" the jester shot back, covering his near slip-up, suddenly no longer a boy of thirteen but a terrifying joker of uncounted years with his trusty dagger at his side. "It is! It is! Don't you want me on your side?"

His surroundings dimmed slowly until he found himself standing in the Hall of Reflection again, alone, with no light and no sound but his own snickering. "Would you like to see a magic trick?" he called cheerfully into the darkness, skipping around in little circles.

"How does it feel, exposing your mind?" came a disembodied voice.

Shaco giggled. "Would you like to hear a joke, instead?" he offered as doors in front of him creaked open slowly. Before they could open more than a few inches, he threw down a smoke bomb and teleported out the rest of the way, leaving behind only faint echoes of his maniacal laughter.

Oh, and a small jack-in-the-box for the next candidate. Shaco's face brightened as he skipped back into visibility on the other side of the doors, chortling as he imagined the next candidate's reaction when they discovered his little present.

* * *

**Eh. I don't think I did Shaco justice. He's much creepier than this. Next up is Quinn.**


	3. III: Quinn's Always Stuttering

**Written for tbagha, a friend of mine who plays Quinn extremely well. **

**Oh jesus. This one is so long - sorry about the length! Quinn's lore has always bugged me because it's so hollow and kind of leaves you going, wait, that's it? No actual backstory, just a fairy tale-esque "underdog girl becomes nation's hero" sort of plot? **

**Also, there's the issue of her brother, who seems to just sort of be there until Quinn finds a pet bird that just so _happens_ to be a bird believed extinct and _happens_ to be found where her brother died, and then she's all focus and motivation again? I don't think so, Riot - that's not how humans work. Also, who the hell sees "valor" in people? I decided to make an actual backstory about Quinn naming the eagle Valor "after her brother". **

**I took a _lot _of creative license with this one, because of the way I initially interpreted the lore that Riot gives us and the way Valor is introduced. Anyways, enjoy! **

* * *

**[JUDGMENT:QUINN]**

**Candidate:** Quinn and Valor, Demacia's Wings

**Observations:**

The first thing they notice about her is the way she walks. Maybe _walks_ isn't the right word - it's the way she _prowls_, more like. Her feet are placed meticulously in front of one another, though she seems to do it effortlessly, without thought, and her shoulders are perpetually tensed in a half-crouch. Her crossbow arm is always held at ready. This is the walk of a hunter. This is the walk of a country girl, the farthest cry from a noblewoman with expensive training. This is the walk of Demacia's Wings.

The second thing they notice is the strange blue shape sitting on the shoulder that is not her crossbow arm. A bird of some exotic breed, one that no one recognizes. Its cold black eyes are terrifyingly intelligent, calculating, disdainful, and the crown of purple-tipped feathers at the top of its head rises aggressively whenever Quinn passes too close to someone.

The only man the bird does not seem to pay any heed to is the one everybody else bows to: crown prince Jarvan the Fourth of Demacia. He smiles and steps up to Quinn and nods at her and takes her hand, whispering something in her ear before scratching the bird on its head and giving it a small treat. The bird bites his ear sharply, but the man laughs, knowing that the creature means it as a sign of affection.

As he walks away, whispers are born like weeds in summer. No one - even the Demacians - can believe that the _crown prince _of Demacia has just given personal attention to a baseborn girl with a fancy-looking pet bird. What made her so special?

But as one woman storms up to her in a jealous rage, the bird on her shoulder _hisses_, more frightening than a snake, and half-unfurls its wings in a diving stance, ready to attack. Suddenly it is not just a fancy pet anymore - this bird is a seasoned predator. This more than deters the angry woman. Quinn doesn't even spare the curious onlookers a glance as she strides up to the double doors, golden-hazel eyes focused.

_The truest opponent lies within. _

Resolutely ignoring the flicker of doubt that those words inspired, the young huntress entered the darkness, and the doors swung shut behind her.

**Reflection:**

Valor shifted uneasily, cooing softly. "Shh," Quinn muttered, staying alert as she readied her crossbow though she knew the opponent in the room wasn't something she could fire at.

The blackness engulfed her, and after maybe a minute, the golden-eyed huntress began to feel the first icy tricklings of unease. She _never_ put herself in a situation where she didn't know exactly what was going on. This kind of vulnerability was never part of her hunters' kit. Or any hunters' kit, really - except maybe dead ones. The darkness was stifling, her blindness oppressive...

"Why do you want to join the League?"

The sudden voice startled her so badly that she actually shrieked and scuttled backwards, crossbow coming up to aim at...nothing. Valor squawked at her sudden movement and took flight, becoming nothing more than a _whoosh_ of air and the sound of flapping wings.

Quinn had prepared herself for this question. "It's been my dream since I was a toddler," she said quickly, forcefully.

"Are you discontent with serving Demacia in my army?" The voice became Prince Jarvan the Fourth's voice, gentle and deep and collected, but Quinn knew him better than that. She could hear the disappointment running under the innocuous question.

"No, my prince," she sighed, and then, unable to stop herself, feeling the need to defend her opinion, the huntress blurted out, "it's just that - well, the soldiers in the army, they don't want - they don't _like_ me. They think I'm not as good as they are because I'm not highborn and I just wanted to show them - I just wanted to prove that I deserve - I mean, that I got promoted because I was _good_, not - not because I was - not because I slept with the commanders." From somewhere overhead, Valor screeched his agreement. And her clumsy, halting way of speech had never helped her, either.

"Even after I tracked down that Noxian assassin," Quinn added bitterly. "They still - they don't - I'm still not one of _them_." And that assassin, the damn, sneaky bastard - some hired blade named Tony Bagha that no one had heard of before that incident - had _not_ been easy to find. Even harder to kill. She shuddered as he remembered how he seemed to know _exactly_ how to fight her so that she would be unbalanced, awkward. _Vulnerable. _

Silence. And then - "So you're doing this for selfish reasons," the voice - no longer the crown prince of Demacia - said musingly, as if asking for confirmation. Quinn gave it with a quick nod of her head, and the voice sighed. "Interesting."

Suddenly, Valor dived at her and buffeted her face with his enormous wings, tearing at her face with his talons. She fell to the ground, crying out and shielding her face with her crossbow arm as her trusted companion took wing again and left her - only to realize that there was no crossbow on her arm anymore. _What? _Her head throbbed and she ached all over from the tumble. But why did tripping give her arms such a soreness?

When she lowered her arm, the blackness was gone, replaced by a verdant grove of trees. _What? _she repeated uncomprehendingly as she picked herself up into a sitting position and dusted herself off. Why did the tree trunk formation look so...so _familiar_, and if she looked up at the interweaving canopy that filtered the sunlight green and otherworldly, why did she have a vague idea of _exactly_ how to climb to the tops of the—

"Quinn!"

She froze. _That's impossible. He's dead. Is this your idea of a sick joke, Summoners?_

"Quinn!" the boy shouted again with a laughing voice. "Did the mighty hunter fall from a _tree_?"

Whirling around to find the source of the voice, Quinn stopped short when she felt hair whip her face. Her long silver ponytail nearly caught in her own eyes as she looked _up_ at the oddly familiar trees she'd just been examining, and her gaze locked onto a teenage boy crouching on a branch some fourteen feet above her.

_Caleb?! _

"Come on, Quinn, I was just joking, don't take everything so seriously," the boy chuckled, shimmying down the tree skillfully to join his twin sister at its base. He tapped her on the head in a half-amused, half-knowing kind of way. "Come on, let's head home before it gets dark. It's going to take us _forever_ to get home."

The huntress frowned, recognizing her surroundings as a small wooded copse some two or three miles from where she grew up. "Why is it going to take us that long? There has to be at _least_ a few hours of daylight left," Quinn retorted.

"Uh, _I_ wasn't the one who got the lucky shot with the arrow that crippled a buck, and _I_ wasn't the one who insisted on dragging the entire damn carcass home," Caleb said, rolling golden-hazel eyes that were identical to hers, brushing long strands of silver hair to the side of a face that could have been her own.

"Hey!" Quinn protested as her brother helped her up and gestured to the small and very dead wild buck with a large puncture wound in its neck lying on the ground near them. "Tanya'll appreciate the extra meat, and we can sell whatever she doesn't want!" Joining her brother, she hoisted a leg over her shoulder and the two of them began the long trek home. The midafternoon sun beat down on them as they exited the cover of the trees.

"Whoa, whoa, lighten up, Winner Quinner," Caleb chuckled as they carried the heavy carcass down a lightly-worn dirt road. She scowled at the nickname as he went on, "I was kidding! Kidding! Yeesh, is it that time of the month or something? That shot of yours wasn't lucky, it was _really good_! I guess all your practice with that weird one-handed bow we found paid off, huh?" He waved the aforementioned weird one-handed bow around on his arm.

The two walked in silence for the next hour and a half, putting most of their energy into hauling the wild buck - which seemed to get heavier as they walked - home. The dirt road was dusty from neglect and hot from the early summer sun, and Quinn found herself thinking about what she would say when the two of them became knights one day.

"_I killed a wild buck all by myself when I was only eleven." _No - that didn't sound impressive enough. The other soldiers - who would probably all have trained since they were old enough to crawl - would laugh at her and her brother and call them lowborn country orphans. They needed to do something much grander, something that they would be remembered _forever_ for.

She mentioned as much to her twin, and Caleb wholeheartedly agreed. "Like that one time we spotted those Noxians camped out on the border," he panted as their small rural village came into sight in front of them. "That was _wicked_ - I bet Demacia would have been _destroyed_ if we hadn't run back and told Tanya!"

"Yeah!" Quinn exclaimed, growing excited as she remembered how Prince Jarvan IV himself had personally visited them to thank them. She still wore the sigil ring he'd thanked them with on her right middle finger. So did her brother. "Quinn and Caleb, the bravest and most honorable knights the world has ever seen, saviors of Demacia!"

"The most handsome man to ever serve in the army," Caleb boasted dreamily, his chest puffed out as he wooed imaginary women. Quinn laughed and they continued to dream about their future knighthoods.

The sun was hovering on the edge between afternoon and twilight when they finally made it back to their home village. They daydreamed all the way, even as they were stepping into Tanya's butchery, the weight of the wild buck long forgotten in their wild imaginations. "Are you two still going on about saving the world and becoming the best knights Demacia has ever seen?" a large, mousy-haired woman asked, amused, from behind the counter as Quinn and Caleb entered the shop, leaving the wild buck outside. "If I were a Noxian, I'd be right scared o' you two - I'd throw meself at y' mercy just to get the both o' you to stop talking!"

"Tanya! Look!" Caleb bubbled as he ran to their foster mother and tugged at her hand. "Come outside and look! We brought you something!" The woman laughed heartily and allowed herself to be dragged outside in good humor.

"Oh me goodness," the woman gasped as she saw the fresh kill. "Caleb, Quinn, did you two carry this all the way back by y'selves? It musta been so heavy!"

"I shot it all by myself," Quinn boasted proudly, grabbing the bow from her brother and wearing it on her hand. Caleb laughed and tapped her on the head in that half-amused, half-knowing way of his. She pretended to aim and shoot as Tanya helped them bring the deer carcass to the back of the shop to skin and drain. "It wasn't _that_ heavy - me and Caleb are growing a lot stronger every day, you know!"

"Yeah!" Caleb concurred, holding his head up high and chest out. "It wasn't heavy at all to me! _I_ thought it was _easy_ to carry back!" Quinn stifled a snicker - Caleb's face was still red with the exertion from hauling the wild buck over a mile and a half.

Tanya winked at Quinn as they set the body down on top of the stone table where the butcher, Tanya's husband, normally prepared meat for the shop. "Oh, that's right, I forgot - you're a big boy now!" the woman said to Caleb in mock admiration. "The strongest knight that ever lived, isn't that right, Quinn?"

"You know what they say, Tanya," Quinn giggled as Caleb puffed himself out even more, looking like he was about to fall over backwards from the effort. "All brawn and no brains!"

"Hey!" her brother protested as he deflated.

"Children," Tanya interrupted, ruffling Caleb's hair affectionately, "there's an explorer in town today - says his name is Ezreal from the Institute of War, and the city of Piltover has sent him on a mission to look for something up near our village. I think he's staying with Old Chio - he's got an extra bed."

Quinn perked up. "Can we meet him? Please, Tanya? Please please please please please?" she pleaded, giving the woman her best puppy eyes look. "Me and Caleb'll be good, we promise!"

"I bet he'll be able to tell us a bunch of stories about the Institute and the League!" Caleb chimed in, eyes shining as the two of them imagined the heroic tales that this explorer from the Institute could tell them. _Maybe he's a hero, too!_ Quinn thought excitedly. "I've always dreamed about being a champion for the League!"

"I thought your dream was to be the bravest knight Demacia has ever seen," Quinn teased, but her eyes grew round as she tried to think of how famous they could be if they became League champions. _Quinn and Caleb, _she thought, beaming from ear to ear, _the dynamic duo, the Summoners' new favorites!_

"Well, no one said we can't be both!" Caleb retorted crossly. "So can we please, pleeaaaaase meet Mister Ezreal?"

"Mister?" Tanya repeated, laughing. "Make sure you don't call him that - he's only sixteen, and I don't think he'd appreciate it very much if you imply that he's old."

"_Only sixteen?_" Quinn parroted in disbelief. Could _she_ become a prodigy like that by the time she was sixteen? She was only eleven. Five years was a lot of time for her and her brother to do something great. She was sure she could. "Wait, does that mean we can go?"

"Let's go!" Caleb crowed triumphantly, grabbing her by the hand and running off before Tanya could say anything. "How _cool_ would it be to be a League champion?"

"The _best_," Quinn agreed as she huffed, trying to keep up with her brother's eagerly breakneck pace. "So many people would want to watch us!"

"We'd be the _greatest _champions of a—oof!"

Quinn skidded to a halt, unsuccessfully trying to stop her momentum as her brother crashed into someone and fell to the ground. She lost her balance when she, too, collided into something much more solid than she was, but before she could topple over, someone grabbed her wrist and her shoulder and steadied her. Her savior - the person they had both crashed into - was a young man with long blonde hair she didn't recognize.

Before she could thank him for catching her, the young man snorted in contempt. "Are the children here blind as well as uncultured?" he spat at them, releasing Quinn and readjusting his gloves. Instinctively, she hid her left arm from his view, not wanting him to see the crossbow.

"We're not _blind_, stupid," the girl bit indignantly, taking an instant dislike to this blonde boy. "We're not uncultured, either. Do you _know_ who we are? Jarvan the Fourth himself _gave_ us his sigil rings because we're _heroes_." Quinn took this opportunity to shove her right hand in the blonde boy's face, making sure he saw the two swords above the cross on her ring.

Blondie appeared bored. "Just because your mother gave you a pretty trinket, doesn't mean you're not _uncultured_," he drawled. _How _dare_ this boy speak to me like that?_ she thought angrily.

"Excu—" Quinn started furiously, but her brother cut her off.

"Are you Mis—are you Ezreal?" Caleb asked excitedly, unfazed by the blonde man's obvious disdain. "Tanya said you were here on a special mission! Are you a League champion? Can you tell us stories about what you do?"

The young man's face softened a tiny bit, but Quinn was still seething inside. "Yes, I'm Ezreal," the explorer confirmed, his voice still high-and-mighty. Quinn wanted to hit him. "Special mission? I don't think so. I'm just here because of some rumors that the ruins of an old city are here somewhere. You've heard the story of the Valorshot, I presume? The arcbow of the legendary hunter, Valor?"

Caleb nodded eagerly but Quinn remained stoic. She didn't like the way this Ezreal was talking to them as if they were stupid. Of _course_ they'd heard of Valor, the greatest hunter who ever walked Runeterra. His weapon of choice was a stroke of engineering genius, something between a crossbow and a gun, and it was said that the thing had a mind of its own, so that only the most skilled and noblest hunters could hope to wield it effectively. According to stories, the arcbow made its wielder faster, lighter, _quicker_.

"That's what I'm here to find," the blonde boy continued. "That, and it's said there's an entire secret tunnel system between Demacia and Noxus. I intend to map them out if they exist - the Valorshot is, presumably, hidden away in one of those passageways."

_Tunnels? _Quinn blinked - there _were_ tunnels. Under the huge plains marsh to the north. She and her brother had explored a few of them before. Wasn't that where they had found the little crossbow she'd used to shoot the buck earlier today? They had found a lot of other things as well - lots of weapons, strange little bows like the one she was using, and an entire room full of tools. She grew excited. _What if one of the other odd-looking bows is the Valorshot? _

Before her brother could give any valuable information to Ezreal, she cut in, "That's pretty cool, I guess. Thanks, Mister Ezreal. Come on, Cal, let's go."

As the young explorer bristled at being called _mister_, Caleb whined, bewildered. "But - we just met him! C'mon, can't w—"

"Let's _go_," Quinn hissed urgently at her dumb, oblivious brother. "_Now."_ And then, without giving him time to protest more, she dragged him away.

"What are you _doing_?" Caleb shouted at her angrily. "Quinn, we could have learned _so much_ from him!"

"Be quiet, dummy," she snapped, jabbing him with the pointy part of the crossbow strapped onto her forearm. "Don't you _see?_ He's looking for some great treasure in the tunnels, right? Well, _we_ know where the ruins are, where the tunnels are! _We_ could go out there and beat him to it! Don't you see? This is our chance!"

Realization dawned on her brother and he smirked. "My little sister is the smartest champion the League will ever have seen," he joked as they stifled their laughter, tapping his sister's head in a half-amused, half-knowing kind of way. Then he sobered. "But he's already on his way there! What if he finds the treasure first?"

Quinn paused. She hadn't considered that. After a moment's thought, she got a brilliant idea. "If we leave now," she said urgently to her brother, "we'll be sure to beat him there! Come on!"

"But Tanya—"

"We'll be back before anybody notices we're gone! Come on!"

And Quinn, caught up in resentment towards the explorer boy and feverish excitement, dashed all the way out of the village she called home. Her brother followed after her, laughing in exhilaration as they ran off into the gathering darkness.

* * *

There was a moment of haziness, and then Quinn found herself flying at her brother's legs in an ancient ruins, in secret underground tunnels.

* * *

"Watch out!" Quinn dove at her brother, tackling them both to the ground as one of them sprung _another_ booby trap. There was a _sssssthunk_ as something sharp whistled through the space they had been standing in seconds ago and embedded itself in a wall instead. Her heart raced - this was _so dangerous_ but so...so...she didn't know if there were any words that could describe the adrenaline-fueled elation she felt at that moment.

"Quinn?" her brother muttered shakily as they sat up. "Quinn...maybe we should go back. That's the sixth one we've run into...what if one of us gets hurt? Do you think we could _die_ here?" He sounded worried. He sounded _scared_.

Quinn was suddenly annoyed. Why was he such a scaredy-cat? "How are we supposed to be the greatest knights of all time if you can't even handle an old tunnel?" she scoffed, standing up and dusting herself off. She took Caleb's hand and pulled him up, too. "Don't you want to find out where the Valorshot is?"

"Yeah, but Quinn," her brother mumbled, "I don't think it's a good idea for us to keep going without some kind of armor...or shield...or _something._" He gestured to the dimly lit stone tunnel around them and jerked a thumb backwards towards the huge cavern they'd first found the small crossbow in, all those months ago. "I think we should head back there...it's not _safe_, Quinn. Look at what this place just shot at us."

Inspecting the wall, Quinn discovered a razor-sharp metal disc with jagged edges. For a second, she wavered - if they hadn't both ducked, they would both have been cut cleanly in half. Or maybe not so cleanly. But then she scolded herself. "So?" Quinn reprimanded her brother. "Aren't we supposed to be brave? What good does being brave do us if we run away at the first sign of danger?"

So on they went. The next three caverns they found were much the same as the first - crumbling remains of grand architecture, some signs that people had once lived there - but no arcbow. The booby traps were getting more and more complex, too; but that made them so much more fun to anticipate and figure out and dodge.

"Ha!" Quinn shrieked victoriously as she rolled out of a somersault, managing to avoid three huge blades that sliced down from the ceiling at them. She'd never felt so _alive_ before - she never knew that she had such quick reflexes or nimble speed before, and she wondered just _what_ her limit was. "Come on, Caleb, I can see moonlight up ahead! Maybe the Valorshot isn't in the tunnels at all! Maybe it's in a secret place in the marshes!"

Whooping, she started forward, but the absence of footsteps following hers made her hesitate. "Caleb, don't be such a sissy!" she whined, stomping her right foot petulantly. "We've made it this far, haven't we?"

Silence. Why wasn't he saying anything?

An icy sinking feeling landed in her stomach as her mind began to realize why her brother hadn't answered. "Caleb?" she said again, frowning and turning back towards her brother. She would find him laying on the floor, stubbornly refusing to go on, she knew she would, she just _knew_ she would, she _had _to—

Her blood froze, and all the color drained out of her face.

Caleb wasn't laying on the floor and being stubborn. He was kneeling, and there were two enormous blades impaling him.

_No,_ Quinn thought sluggishly, lurching forward unsteadily. Her body seemed to slow to respond, like it was lagging. _No. _This wasn't real. This was a cruel trick, another trap to bait her forward. Any second now, the illusion would end and her brother would appear, unharmed, on the ground and beg her to turn back like he had been for the past two hours.

_Any second now. _

_He's going to appear right...there. _

_Any second n..._

"NO!" Quinn screamed, running forward and tripping, crashing to the ground and laying there, sobbing. Her knees were probably skinned, if the stinging pain was anything to judge by, but what did it matter? What did anything matter? There was no reason for her to make the effort to get up anymore. Caleb was _dead_ and it was _her fault_—

This was all her fault.

This was _all her fault_.

_This was ALL HER FAULT._

Gods have mercy, but this was _all her fault._ If she'd just _stopped_ to _listen_ to her brother's voice of reason, he would still be alive. If she'd just realized how _stupid_ it actually was to go into these tunnels alone. They were _eleven_ and they weren't magical or geniuses or knights or champions or even warriors. They were _children_.

"No, Caleb, get up, _get up_, please!" the huntress sobbed, crawling forwards to fall in a limp heap at her brother's knees. "_Please_, you have to get up! I'm sorry, I swear I'll always listen to you from now on, _get up,_ Caleb, _GET UP!_ You _have to get up!_ Please! We...we still have to join the League together, and become the...best warriors Demacia has ever seen...! I can't go without you, I won't go without you!"

_Plip. Plip. Plip. Plip. _Dark crimson blood continued to drip down Caleb's body and onto the cold, hard floor. "Don't leave me here, alone," Quinn begged. "Get _up_!"

"Why do you want to join the League?" her brother asked gently, and with a screech of horror, Quinn jerked back and stared at the bloodied body. His mouth was moving but his eyes were not her brother's eyes, and suddenly she recalled that she was in the Hall of Reflection.

Valor screamed from somewhere overhead and landed on his distressed human's shoulder, hissing angrily at the corpse with his wings held half-closed. Quinn wiped her tears away but could not bring herself to stand up, too shaken from having to relive the worst night of her life. She bit her lip, refusing to answer.

"Why do you want to join the League, master of Valorshot?" the corpse asked again, Quinn's eyes widened, and her gaze flicked downwards to the small crossbow-like contraption on her left arm, the same one she'd used to kill that wild buck all those years ago. Her right arm clenched into a fist, and the small sigil ring on her middle finger seemed to burn her skin.

"It was my dream," she whispered as she held her right arm up in front of her. Valor gracefully perched on her wrist, and she gazed hard at the middle talon on his right foot.

Silence again. Caleb stared at the two of them with frightening black eyes, but his face was gentle, as if waiting for her to go on.

Her shoulders slumped in defeat. "It was _his_ dream, too," Quinn finally admitted as she looked away from the scar on the bird's middle talon - a scar shaped like two swords over a cross. Valor screeched his agreement, the crown of purple-tipped feathers on his head standing straight up as he pecked Quinn's head before he shattered into brilliant, swirling haze. Quinn shouted in surprise and stiffened, and the tunnel around them melted away, and Caleb's body was suddenly undamaged, restored. His eyes were closed.

The haze seemed to be _sucked_ into the corpse somehow. "Val!" Quinn cried, confused and angry, now that she knew the summoners' game. She would _not_ lose her eagle _and_ her brother on the same day. "_Val!_"

Caleb opened his eyes and smiled gently at her, a melancholy, knowing smile. She stared back in shock at golden-hazel eyes that could have been her own, set in the face that could have been her own. "How does it feel, exposing your mind?" he asked, reaching his hand out towards his sister.

She didn't know what to do, what to feel, what to expect. Her brother, whole and alive - and she _knew_ it was him, because those _eyes_ - standing in front of her, in the middle of the Hall of Reflection, and he was _right there_ and he was _alive_ and—

"Caleb?" she managed to choke out in wonder. "Caleb, I—" There were so many things she needed to say. _I should be the one who died, not you, I should have listened to you, I shouldn't have been so impulsive, it was my fault that you died because I wanted to show that stinking Ezreal up, and the Valorshot, I - the Valorshot, Caleb, you should have been the one wearing it that day, you would have - if you'd been wearing it, you would have gotten out of the way in time, _and none of the words she wanted to say were coming out of her mouth.

Then, Quinn blinked, and Caleb was gone, and the only thing he left behind was the sound of flapping wings. Valor landed at his customary place on her shoulder as doors in front of her opened and light streamed into the dark room. She didn't know whether she wanted to weep or to celebrate her success, but her feet carried her forward as if of their own accord. No - walked wasn't the right word for the way the huntress weaved through the room.

"We're living our dream, Val," Quinn said quietly, tears gathering in the corners of her eyes as she stepped out of the Hall of Reflection as a champion in the League of Legends.

Something in her finally broke, and she sobbed, though she wasn't sure it was all from joy. "W-we finally made it - after all these years of training and - if only those soldiers could see me now, I would laugh at them and - Jarvan is going to be so _proud_ of us, Val!" she blubbered, laughing and spinning around in an impromptu dance as she scratched her eagle's head affectionately.

The two of them ignored the strange looks they received from passersby as they whirled around in a not quite elegant, but not quite clumsy fashion. "Val, we made it, we made it!" Quinn sang, smiling brightly at her most trusted companion.

Valor screeched victoriously as Quinn continued to cry. The eagle trilled an oddly melodious note as he tapped Quinn's head in a half-amused, half-knowing kind of way as she fed him a small treat.

* * *

**Cookies for anyone who leaves me a review :) If you have a specific request for a champion you can message me or leave it in a review here. Next up is Annie by a friend's request. **


	4. IV: Annie's Always Playful

**Requested by a friend of mine. For some reason, writing this one was extremely hard - I wanted to show that Annie is much darker than her ten years of age should allow, but didn't know what she should go through during her judgment. I settled on her dream for the future, where she is sixteen and much more mature so I could write her personality more easily. **

**Cameo: Parm, my jungler, once tried to gank an enemy Annie during a game I was Syndra mid vs Annie mid. He tower dived with 30% hp left and gave Annie both buffs, so I decided to put him in a cameo here to honor his sacrifice...**

* * *

**[JUDGMENT:ANNIE]**

**Candidate: **Annie Hastur, the Dark Child

**Observations:**

"Excuse me, mister," says a sweet, high-pitched voice, and when the confused Warwick does not find anybody for the voice to belong to, there is a tug on his leg. He looks down, snarling, and everybody gives him a wide berth. The staff at the Institute - actually, anyone who's heard of Warwick and his wicked temper and the experiment with Singed - know better than to bother him when he gets annoyed. "Can you tell me where the Hall of Reflection is?"

Warwick bares his teeth in a feral snarl. "Go back to school, girlie," he growls at the young girl with ruby-purple hair and the large green eyes. "Who let you into this place?" One of the staff makes as if to help the girl, but Warwick's head snaps up to glare balefully at the man, the he scurries off, leaving Annie Hastur to Warwick's wrath.

The girl giggles. "I let myself in. Can you please tell me which way the Hall of Reflection is? I think I'm almost late," she implores the half-beast, half-man, undeterred by his foul breath and his vicious expression. "Do you like fire, mister?" Annie holds her small hand up and crimson fire - which at first glance _looks_ like natural fire, but then you realize it's too..._dark -_ flickers to life in the palm of her hand.

Suddenly, the girl's smile seems just a little _too_ wide and a little _too _innocent, and the firelight coming from her hand seems to reveal something dark and sinister behind her intelligent eyes that suddenly seem a little _too_ intelligent. Like she knows something that you don't, a terrible secret about you that even you don't recall. And her wide, puppy-eyed expectant expression is suddenly more than just expectant; she seems to be..._waiting_ for something to happen to you.

Whatever Warwick sees in her verdant eyes, it seems to unsettle him. "Come with me," he barks grudgingly at the child, who he now notices is holding a small, worn stuffed teddy bear. Sullen and hating the fact that he has had to sink so low as to play nanny to a ten year old girl for even a couple minutes, the half-beast, half-man leads Annie Hastur to the Hall of Reflection.

It is a strange sight, the two of them: Warwick is so annoyed that it wouldn't be a surprise if steam blew out of his nostrils, and Annie is so giddy and small and _cute_ that people grin at her as they pass by and whisper _oh, how precious_ to each other in hushed tones. "Thank you, mister!" Annie giggles, hugging his furry leg and skipping off before the frustrated manhunter can do anything to express his irritation. Then she stops and turns back, as if forgetting something. "Oh, and Tibbers says you smell bad," she calls back in a sing-song tone, wrinkling her nose and waving her stuffed bear at the dumbfounded wolf-man.

Without hesitating (or stopping to read the inscription above the doors, either), the ten-year-old skips inside the Hall of Reflection, humming cheerfully, her backpack bouncing on her back. As the doors slam shut behind her, the entire Institute seems to shake as a loud, long, annoyed howl rips through its hallways.

**Reflection:**

It was dark inside the Hall of Reflection. But the darkness had never really bothered Annie - after all, fire provided plenty of light. She lit a tiny pillar of it in front of her now, so she could see what else was in the room with her. To her disappointment, there didn't seem to be anything in the room at all - just black emptiness. "Hello?" she called out curiously, skipping around the room. "Is anyone there?"

"Why do you want to join the League?" a man asked, and Annie perked up, looking around to find who had spoken.

When she found nothing but darkness, the young girl shrugged. "I dunno," she said whimsically, keeping her face neutral and her voice light. "My mama and my papa would have wanted me to, I guess. Isn't becoming a champion, like, a really cool job or something? I think they'd be proud of me, don't you, Tibbers?"

"And where are your mama and papa now, Annie Hastur?" the manless voice asked after a short delay.

Annie shrugged, her playful smile never once slipping off her face as she hugged her teddy bear close. "Somewhere up there, I suppose," she sighed, gesturing vaguely to the ceiling, "if heaven is up there. If not, I don't really know where mama and papa are. Inside me, I guess. Where the fire comes from."

No sooner than the word _fire_ left her lips did the pillar of flames in her hand expand so rapidly that she couldn't even control them. _No!_ She tried to scream but no sound came out, and the fire engulfed her. Annie squeezed her eyes shut, desperately trying to regain control over the fire - she'd _never_ lost control like that before - what had happened...and why did the fire not burn her...?

Just as the thought occurred to her, the fire vanished, leaving spots in her vision and rendering her frustratingly blind. When her vision returned, she was standing in the middle of a sinister forest, where the trees themselves seemed to emanate a sense of _unwelcome_. The ground was hard dirt with barely any undergrowth, and the sparse canopy did little to hide the eerie gray sunlight that seemed to struggle to reach the earth. The tree trunks were hard, black, and brittle, and the ground underneath her feet seemed more akin to ash than to earth.

_The Voodoo Lands,_ Annie recognized, feeling dizzy. The last time she had seen these forests was almost two years ago.

There was a loud bellow to her right, and a massive bear with glowing red eyes and viciously sharp claws lumbered out from behind a large tree. "Garaaaggghh," Tibbers said to her, falling to its haunches obediently as it approached the small girl and sat in front of her. "Gaaaaaaaargaaggh."

Annie giggled, hoisting herself up onto her bear's shoulders. "Come on, Tibbers!" she cried giddily, looking up at the sky and realizing that there were only a couple hours of daylight - well, greylight in the Voodoo Lands - left. "Let's go home." As her shadow bear trotted off at a slow pace, she played with a small ring of fire that she tossed from hand to hand. She wondered if she could juggle three firebal—

_What's going on in the settlement? _

There was noise from up ahead. Screaming. Crying. Things shattering...and metal on metal. _What's going on?_ Annie thought, narrowing her eyes and readying a fireball. If anyone was going to hurt her Tibbers...but then her bear rounded one of the guard towers at the Grey Order settlement and the first thing she saw was blood.

It was everywhere. Thick, red, metallic - the acrid sting of it made her want to wrinkle her nose, but she didn't because she _wasn't_ a scaredy-cat. It was just blood - it wasn't like she'd never seen it before.

The second thing she saw were bodies. Those were everywhere, too. _Oh, no,_ she thought, jumping off of Tibbers and unsummoning him back into his teddy bear form again. No! There were men running around, men in shiny black armor with all kinds of lethal looking weapons, and as she ran urgently back to her tent-house, someone grabbed her from behind and lifted her up with one arm. She screamed, flailing and kicking at whoever held her, but it was no good.

"Hush, Miss Hastur," a low voice warned her, and Annie relaxed a little when she recognized the speaker - her captor - as one of her family friends. But his voice, usually calm and deep and soothing, was completely devoid of any gentleness tonight. It was filled with a sense of urgency and panic and something else she couldn't recognize. "We need to get out of here. _Now._"

"What?" Annie protested as the man cradled her in his arms against his chest. "No! No, put me down, Lorathor! Where are Mama and Papa? Mama! Papa! _MAMA_! We have to go get them!" She was ignored, even as she beat her hands against his chest ineffectually. "My house is in the other direction! Where are you going?"

The druidic shapeshifting member of the Grey Order shook his head flatly at her. "Too late. We need to get out of here, _NOW,_" he repeated, running as fast as he could while carrying her. How _dare_ some lowly scholar from the Kumungu Jungle order _her_ around? Why was he ignoring her? Well, she would fix that.

"Let me _go_!" Annie yelled, releasing a jet of fire from her palms as she beat her fists against his arms. The shapeshifter yelped and dropped her as the flames burned his skin, and she took the opportunity to run off, ignoring his frantic calls for her to return. _Run faster, Annie, come on, _she urged herself as she heard Lorathor give chase. _House is...right...there! _She ducked through the small tent flap that served as a front door. "Mama? Papa?" she called, running into the tent. She collided with something hard and solid and fell backwards onto the ground, dazed.

She found herself staring up at four men in shiny black armor. One of them had a spear, one had wickedly curved swords, and the other two had hammers in their hands. "What is this?" one of the ones with the hammers said curiously as they turned their attention on her. "A child?"

Annie wasn't comprehending anything they were seeing. Between their legs, she caught a glimpse of her home. It had been overturned and hacked to pieces, but why was everything so red? "I wasn't aware those damn mages had a _kid_," the other one with the hammers was muttering irately.

"Guess we got lucky she wandered in here on her own," the man with the swords chuckled as he glanced behind him. "Too bad we already got your Mama and Papa," he sneered at her as he reached for her.

_W...what? _

"Mama?" Annie stammered as she finally caught sight of two unrecognizable shapes lying on the ground. They were bloody and red and lifeless. "P-papa?"

"Huh. I guess they really _did_ have a kid," the first man with the hammer mused, shrugging. "Must've been hard for them to raise a girl out here in the Voodoo Lands. Well, do what you gotta do, Parm."

The man with the swords grabbed her. Annie stared at her parents' mutilated bodies, shaking - and something _exploded_ inside of her. As the man made to stab her with his weapon, a ring of fire blasted out from her body and knocked all four men back, lighting them ablaze and freeing her from the swords-man's grasp. "You _killed_ my mama and papa!" Annie shrieked hysterically as the truth slammed into her numb mind. "You killed them! You _killed them! YOU KILLED THEM!"_

Those three words became a mantra. Still screaming, she suddenly found herself bursting with unbearable heat. It was like the sun had flown down to her tent - she as being burned alive, it was _sweltering_, the fire was consuming her. It was going to eat her alive if it didn't find an outlet.

So she released it.

Fire exploded from her hands like a waterfall, a never-ending pressurized stream of white-hot conflagration that swirled around Parm, the man with the bloody swords who had killed her parents and cut them up. And then, seconds later, he was nothing but crisps and bones. The inferno grew and engulfed the other four men and the rest of the tent, and then suddenly the fires dissipated into the sky.

She slumped to the ground, suddenly very sleepy. There was a lot of shouting and her eyelids were drooping shut, but she thought she saw a lot of men running towards her. Then she felt something snatch the back of her dress and flip her into the air like she weighed nothing. She landed on something soft and furry.

"Tibbers?" Annie yawned, clutching her teddy bear close as the animal under her began pumping its legs at an alarming pace. She nearly fell off from the speed, but managed to force her eyes open long enough to glimpse the long black fur of the panther she was being carried off by. "Lora...thor? They...they killed Mama and Papa, Lor," she mumbled confusedly, drifting into darkness. "They...they killed..."

* * *

Annie bolted upright, panting heavily in a cold sweat and prepared to summon Tibbers at any moment's notice. Then she remembered where she was, and she relaxed. "Lorathor," she whispered, and waited. Moments later, an enormous ebony-black panther materialized from the shadows around her. _It was just a dream,_ the sixteen year old told herself fiercely as she buried her face in her long-time friend's soft fur. _Just a dream. _

The air around the panther shimmered as Annie released him, and Lorathor stood up on two legs in his human form. "The Grey Order is ready when you are, Miss Hastur," he informed her quietly as he moved to stand at the top of the hill overlooking the city of Noxus with her.

Annie blew out a long breath of air, instinctively clutching her stuffed bear closer to her side. Her long red hair billowed behind her as a stiff breeze gusted across the hilltop. She'd been waiting eight years for this moment. Eight long years with the straggled, bedraggled remains of her parents' Grey Order after the Noxian raid on the settlement. Eight long years since she had lost her parents to the Noxian High Command, which had decided that letting a colony of arcane practitioners live independent from the state government was too risky. Eight long years since Lorathor had given up his nonviolence oaths to train her in magic and become her best friend and father figure.

_Bastards,_ Annie thought venomously as she turned away from the twisted little city. The moonlight lit the night up like day. But Noxus wouldn't need light from the moon anymore. Not after tonight. She walked down the side of the hill facing away from the dark city and into the woods where five of the six surviving members of the Grey Order were waiting. "It's almost time," Annie said calmly to them as Lorathor prowled around them, a growling feral panther once more. "We're just waiting on Amumu's signal now."

"Are you sure you want to do this, Miss Hastur?" her warlock asked one last time as the group of them skirted the hill and lay low outside the city walls. "If they overwhelm you, this could end very badly for you."

The red-haired young woman smiled her too wide, too innocent smile. "I'll be alright, Tasola," she reassured the hooded man. "I'll have Tibbers with me, remember? As long as we get into their central ministry building, everything will go according to plan."

The warlock nodded uncertainly, but seemed to trust her enough to take her word for it. Silence settled among and around Annie and her Grey Order as they waited in the moonlit darkness. Minutes stretched into almost an hour, and then Lorathor's sharp eyes caught the signal. "Annie," he purred as he padded stealthily around her, gesturing to a small blue light hovering on the ramparts above them. "Look. There's Amumu's beacon."

_This is it._ "Let's move," she replied tersely, starting forward and slipping through the unlocked side gate next to the enormous portcullis that barred unwelcome entry to the city. Annie felt at the stuffed teddy bear hanging from a belt loop at her hip as they crept into Noxus. She waved to the small mummy yordle sitting on top of the wall as they moved into the city, and the sad little mummy waved back to her before jumping out of the city and disappearing.

"Hey! You!" someone called in a very drunk manner, and Annie looked back towards her Grey Order to see a large group of intoxicated men who'd caught sight of her party. Intoxicated men _wearing armor_. _Shit,_ Annie cursed. _Why are the guards still awake? _She'd underestimated the amount of activity that Noxus would have in the middle of the night - she had thought the city would be as still as it was black. "Who r'you an' whaddarya doin' in Noxu—"

The man who had spotted them fell to the ground, dead. Annie yanked her hand backwards, and the razor-sharp whip of crystalline fire flew obediently back towards her. Lorathor suddenly appeared out of the shadows and knocked another two men to the ground in a noisy crash. Without waiting for further orders, the rest of her Grey Order jumped into action, and within minutes, every single guard was dead.

"Move fast," she hissed as they sped towards the center of the city. "That was too loud. They'll know we're in the city." One by one, her Grey Order dropped back and spread through the city, until she only had Lorathor left by the time the two of them managed to reach the immense structure at the center of the city. By then, the alarm had been sounded and the city was awake and hunting for them.

The huge double doors in front of her were barred with metal. Annie smirked. _Perfect._

"Ready, Lor?" she murmured. When she received an affirmative ear flick from the jungle cat, she smiled and raised her arms towards the doors. "Tibbers!" she sang as a small speck of light appeared between her hands. "Come out and play!" The speck of light grew intensely bright as a loud, thundering rumble shook the ground and her massive shadow bear exploded into life beside her.

The tiny pinprick of light between her hands was blinding, now, like a condensed sun. Annie grinned, and for a second, the world was frozen - Noxus and its wakeful inhabitants, Lorathor crouching beside her ready to pounce, the wind gusting at her dress - and then the moment was gone. She _pushed_ with all her might, and the glaringly brilliant point of light between her hands exploded into a roaring surge of white-hot, blue-tinged fire that streamed forward and licked at the metal doors, trying to find something to burn for fuel. It found none, but Annie continued to flood the air with flames. The steel-barricaded doors turned cherry red and began to disform.

Tibbers roared and bulled forwards into the doors, throwing his immense weight at the scalding-hot doors. The doors, their steel bar having melted off, gave way easily under his bulk, and the enormous shadow bear crashed through them and into the Hall of the High Command. Over the noise, Annie could faintly make out shouts of surprise and alarm as her pet bear charged into them and scattered them like bowling pins.

"Go get them, Tibbers!" she giggled gleefully as Noxian guardsmen began to appear and approach cautiously, wary of her malestrom of white fire. Not losing control over the frightening vortex of swirling flame for a single second, Annie smiled and waved at them. A dismembered hand landed at her feet as Tibbers ripped straight through one man's armor. She laughed.

"Do you like to play with fire?" Annie called brightly to the guardsmen, who continued to advance on her. _Nine against one,_ she thought, skipping towards the armed men and humming as Tibbers continued to tear apart the poor man whose hand had already been ripped off. "I can teach you!" she said when none of the men responded, and the scorching conflagration behind her surged forward to consume everything in its - and her - path.

Everything that happened after that was a blur of billowing smoke and blistering heat. The next thing Annie knew, she was standing in front of Swain, the High Command of Noxus, and she was hedged in from all sides by his guards and a couple other champions she recognized. She wasn't quite sure how Singed and Katarina had managed to reach the council chamber in time to save Swain and bring reinforcements, but they had. She clutched Tibbers more tightly - at least she had managed to unsummon him before she had been overwhelmed.

"You killed my parents," Annie informed Swain in an aloof tone, very well aware that one wrong move meant death for her. "You broke your promise to leave them alone if they left the city." As subtly as possible, she snapped her index and middle fingers on her left hand, hiding the small pinprick of light that grew in her palm.

The High Command sneered at her, and soldiers around her chuckled at how naive she sounded. _That's right,_ Annie coaxed sweetly, _keep laughing at me. All I am is a little girl who's sad because she lost her parents. _"We made no such promise, Dark Child," Swain boomed merrily, staring at her interestedly. "As it so happens, we are no longer persecuting those who pursue the arcane magicks. You would make a fine High Mage on the Noxian military council, child."

"Why would I join the likes of you?" Annie sneered, curling her lip and narrowing her eyes. Katarina made as if to draw her dagger and jump, but Swain shook his head at her and she stilled.

"Let me rephrase my proposal," the High Command said pleasantly, as if he were chatting with someone over afternoon tea. "It would be in your...best interests, let's say, to join us." He gestured around the room to his military. "You're in no position to refuse."

_That's what you think,_ Annie snickered to herself but twisted her face into a cornered, defiant kind of expression. _Let him think I'm weakening. Let him think he's winning. _Her incendiary explosion was charging as fast as she could pour fire into it. It was difficult for her to keep her hand from trembling from condensing so much magic at once. "I...I'll never join you!" Annie shouted, glancing around her and stuttering for dramatic effect. "You killed my parents!"

Swain grinned triumphantly as he saw her "wavering" under the pressure of his power. "You don't have a choice, little lass," he crowed. "You can either join the Noxus High Command as part of the council, or you will d—"

Annie pounced.

Tibbers exploded into life at the same time her fist clenched as she brought her arm over her head. A deluge of white flames surged outwards from her raised hand, filling the room with blinding light and parching heat. Her shadow bear lunged straight for the agile red-haired assassin, who barely managed to shunpo out of the way of his wickedly hooked claws. "You _killed my parents_!" Annie shrieked as she unleashed the storm of flames before Swain's guards could react. The fire whirled faster and faster as it expanded, becoming a blazing whirlpool until she couldn't see anything else.

When her vision cleared, there was nothing left of the room except ashes and sooty remains of charred bodies, which Tibbers was feasting happily on. Annie stepped up to Swain's corpse and reached out to rip the High Commander's helmet and pin from his body. As she reached for him, he lifted his head and looked at her. "Why do you want to join the League, Annie Hastur?" he asked. Their surroundings faded to black, and suddenly she was a ten-year-old child with a backpack and a stuffed teddy bear again.

She need not hide it from them this time; they had already seen into her mind. As intrusive as it was, Annie found that she didn't mind. She bounced up and down a little as she looked directly back into illusion-Swain's lifeless eyes and smiled a too wide, too innocent smile. "To watch you burn," she answered, her large green eyes expectant.

Silence.

Then illusion-Swain faded into nothingness, whispering, "How does it feel, exposing your mind?" as the doors in front of her opened to show her that she had passed.

Annie skipped out, humming cheerfully as she swung her teddy bear back and forth. "We're gonna have lots of fun, aren't we, Mister Tibbers?" she giggled as she ran into the Institute. There was a practice courtyard on her right, and she saw a man with skin that looked like a volcano practicing on one of the dummy targets. He was throwing oddly-colored balls of...

_Fire!_ Annie recognized happily, running out into the courtyard and skipping up to the volcano man. She tugged on his hand and he froze, staring down at her with an absurdly confused expression on his face. _Maybe he ate something funny for lunch,_ Annie thought as he stared down at her in surprise. "Hi, mister!" Annie said brightly, waving at him. "I'm Annie. Do you like to play with fire?"

The man grunted noncommittally and nodded towards the dummy he had been using. "Do you want to play together?" she asked excitedly as she incinerated the target dummy with a shock of fire. The man stiffened at her casual display of her prowess, and then he smiled at her, igniting a small flame on the end of his index finger like a candle and holding it down for her to observe.

"Play," the man repeated curiously, his voice sounding as cracked and dry as his volcano-skin looked. He gave her a violent grin before turning back to the dummy.

Annie smiled back, a smile that was too wide, too innocent. The firelight seemed to reveal something sinister and dark, too mature for a ten year old, behind her bright green eyes.

_I will watch you burn,_ she hummed to herself as she played with her newfound friend, practicing on the target dummy. _And you will scream for mercy before I let the fire eat you alive._

* * *

**Annie Hastur, everyone. Meh. I didn't like writing this for some reason. Maybe if I'd written a judgment that made her go through a memory instead of something she wants for the future? **

**Anyways, leave a review! Next up in the Judgment series is Master Yi as per another request, but I'm going to write two standalone pieces first, a Diana-centric Diana/Leona fic (because Diana was my first real main char and her lore has so much potential) and a Lulu/Veigar oneshot (requested by a friend of mine). See you next time!**


	5. V: Diana-Leona Standalone Preview

**Short preview of the Diana-centric Diana / Leona standalone I'm working on. Diana is hands down my favorite champion, but in gameplay _and_ in lore. Her backstory is not lacking in the official Riot lore, but it has enormous potential. Especially with Leona. **

**Their story is too long to be told in a single judgment, so my interpretation of their backstory will be a separate standalone to be published sometime later this week. This is far removed from my usual writing style - I've never tried anything in present tense before, but it seems to work well here. **

**AimedSiren - I'm glad you enjoyed reading these! I've been a little iffy about whether or not I'm getting the real essence of the champions, so having someone tell me I am is really reassuring ^^**

**Lady Faceless - wow, I can't believe you're reading fanfiction in a language that isn't your native language - props to you, and I'm extremely happy that you can understand my stories :) **

**Enjoy this short Diana / Leona preview! **

* * *

_**Smile Down Upon (preview)**_

They first meet in the library of the Solari.

The little girl with the violet eyes, so dark they are almost black - such an odd color for a Solari child, but not entirely unheard-of - and long black hair - a much more normal color than her piercing eyes - is trying to find a book about the stars when she comes across another girl, who's about her size. The other girl is trying to reach for a book that's clearly out of her reach, so the indigo-eyed girl decides to help. She walks up behind the other girl and wraps her arms around the other girl's legs and lifts, revealing an unnatural amount of strength in her arms.

The other girl shrieks - no matter that they're in a library and they're supposed to be quiet - and flails around, and they both topple to the ground. In a flash, the other girl is sitting on top of her, glaring at her with angry brown eyes. "What are you _doing_?" the other girl demands, refusing to let her up. "Commoners aren't supposed to _touch_ me! They'll taint me! Don't you know who I _am?_"

The little girl with the purple eyes blinks, confused at first but now indignant. "You looked like you needed help reaching a book!" she bites back defensively, pushing the other girl off of her with the unusual strength she's had ever since she could remember. "I was just trying to help you out! What's _wrong_ with you, anyways?"

The other girl seems to deflate a bit. "Oh," she says, sort of sheepishly as she helps the girl with black eyes to her feet. "Erm, thanks, I suppose. I didn't know you were trying to help. I thought you might be kidnapping me, or attacking me. Or something."

The little girl stares at the other girl in disbelief, deep violet eyes with with shock. "_Kidnapping_ you?" she repeats, flabbergasted, but takes the other girl's hand anyways and pulls herself up. "Why would I do _that_?" She gestures to the book that the other girl was previously trying to reach, and cups her hands at knee level. The other girl steps delicately onto the makeshift foothold (the little girl with the violet eyes grunts - the other girl is heavier than she thought she would be), retrieves the book, and jumps down, grinning.

"Thanks," the other girl says, tucking her wavy brown hair behind her ear and huffing. "Well, the warrior council are always telling me that there are bad people from the outside that want to hurt me or kidnap me, because I'm one of Rakkor's best fighters."

"Rakkor?" The violet eyes betray surprise. "I didn't know they could read! Aren't you supposed to be really scary and violent and fight all the time? Are you even allowed to be in our library?"

The other girl takes offense to that. "What?" she challenges aggressively, brandishing the book like she would a hammer. "Just because we're warriors, doesn't mean we can't _read_! It's not like we fight _all the time_, we do other stuff too, like hiking and camping and playing games. And besides, I got _special_ permission from your elders to come and borrow a book because I finished my training early today, so _there_!" She waves the book at the little violet-eyed girl's nose.

_The Rakkor don't fight every minute of every day?_ Only then does the little girl with the violet eyes see the cover of the book that she's currently being threatened with. "_The Radiant Dawn_!" she exclaims excitedly, all hostility forgotten as she beams, her smile as bright as the sun itself. "That's the _coolest_ story ever! Are you going to become a sun worshipper, like we are?"

The other girl grins back at her, also having forgotten her indignity as she gets caught up in how eager the little girl with the violet eyes is. "I know!" she whispers back, suddenly remembering that they _are_ in a library. "One of my bunk mates told me the story once but she forgot half of it, so I wanted to read it for myself!" Then she frowns, and continues, "But I don't know if I can be a sun worshipper. I thought that was only for Solari people."

_What is a "bunk mate"?_ the purple-eyed girl wonders before her shoulders slump. "Oh," she says lamely. She hadn't thought of that before - what if only Solari people were allowed to worship the sun? Would the other girl be sad? But then she thinks of something else, and she brightens up. "Don't worry!" she bubbles, amethystine eyes shining. "I'm sure that if the Rakkor can let the Solari live up here without fighting us all the time, the elders will let you learn how to worship the sun! It's only fair! I mean, it can't hurt, right?"

"Right!" the other girl agrees, seeing no fault in that logic. She perks up at the thought of being able to learn something other than fighting. She thinks fighting is rather boring; the only person her age that she can't beat is her best friend, anyway, and he's a _boy_, so she won't need to fight him either way. "My name's Leona." She sticks her hand out in a peace offering.

The little girl with the violet eyes and long black hair takes it and shakes it. "Diana."

They are eight, and they are oblivious.

* * *

The next time they meet is not too long after their first encounter. Two weeks later, to be exact. The little girl with the purple eyes and black hair is in the library again when she catches sight of the other girl she had met last time she was here. "Lo-ona!" Diana shouts excitedly, stumbling over the unfamiliar name, and is promptly and viciously _shhhh_'ed by the librarian. "What are you doing here?"

"Hi Diana!" the other girl greets, just as excitedly. She shows Diana _The Radiant Dawn_ before she hands it to the annoyed librarian and turns back. "I just finished reading it for the eighth time! But I had to bring it back because the book was due today."

Leona seems a little disappointed, Diana notices. But she knows the best way to cheer the strange Rakkor girl up. She would show Leona _all_ of her favorite books about the sun god, and then maybe if they were really, _really_ quiet, the librarian would let them check out a few of the stories. "Come on," the little girl with the violet eyes whispers, giggling, and grabs the other girl's hand and pulls her into the labyrinth of bookshelves.

Her favorite story is the one about the archer god and how there used to be _ten_ suns in the sky, but nine of them were evil and wanted to destroy the world with the heat from their sunlight, so the tenth sun worked with the archer god to help him stop the evil suns from burning up the earth. Diana wastes no time in regaling Leona with this tale, and at the end, Leona nods sagely. "Is the tenth sun the one that the Solari worship?" she whispers inquisitively. "Because he was the one good sun and he helped save the world?"

Diana nods hesitantly - she's never thought of it that way before, and now she's excited for an entirely new reason. "See, Le...Le...Lo-ona? You understood that as soon as I finished the story! The Solari _have_ to let you worship the tenth sun!" she exclaims fiercely.

The Rakkor girl looks hopeful. "You really think so?" she asks, and then she frowns. "_Le_ona, not Lo-ona."

"Lee-_au_-na," Diana repeats dutifully, trying very hard to get it right. "Leona."

Leona's face lights up like the dawn when Diana finally gets her name right, and the little girl with the violet eyes heaps the other girl's arms with books. "These are all stories about the sun," Diana explains when Leona gives her a questioning look. "I thought...I mean, don't you get bored fighting all the time? I get bored training, and I only do that three times a week. So I thought you might want stuff to read. You know, when you get tired of training," she finishes quickly, embarrassed. What if Leona didn't _want_ to read all these books? What if Leona was angry because Diana had made her carry all the books?

"...Thank you," Leona says quietly, with the kind of surprised look that someone gives you when you hold the door open just four seconds longer for them and they're not expecting you to. The two of them burst out into giggles and run to the librarian's desk.

"I'm sorry, I can't let you check these books out," the librarian - a middle-aged woman with graying hair - informs the two of them.

"What?" Diana exclaims, drooping in disappointment. "Why?"

"Unless you have express permission from the elders or from the Solstice Council, I'm afraid I can't let anyone who's not a member of the Solari tribe check books out from this library," the woman explains apologetically. Before Diana can protest further, the librarian adds thoughtfully, "You got permission from them last time, though, so you shouldn't have any trouble getting it now. They should still be at the High Hall - if you hurry, I'm sure you can ask them to sign a permission slip for you."

"Really?" Leona brightens up, her brown eyes hopeful. She turns to the little girl with the violet eyes. "Diana, can we go? Can we _please_ go?"

Diana laughs at how the other girl asks her, as if she is afraid that Diana will not come with her to the elders. "Come on!" the little girl laughs, tugging Leona out of the library. "I can give you a tour of the temple, too! You'll like it, I promise!"

"The temple? Is that where the High Hall is?" Leona asks curiously as the two of them run outside into the fading afternoon sunlight and up the slopes of Mount Targon's peak. There are barely any people of the Solari tribe outside at this hour; most of the children are in class, and the adults at worship, Diana tells Leona as they dash breathlessly through the buildings and trees scattered around the Solari temple at the center of the peak.

"So why aren't you in class?"

The little girl with the violet eyes fidgets and plays with a corner of her red and gold homespun tunic. She looks up at the darkening sky. The full moon - usually invisible during daylight - is a silvery orb today that occupies the same space in the sky that the sun does. The sun and the moon seem to smile down upon the two girls running up the highest mountain known to humankind.

"I don't really have a class," Diana admits, a little forlornly. "I...well, I'm the only one between the ages of seven and ten right now. And I'm training to be a sun warrior, anyways, so I don't really have to go to classes, as long as I go to my training. Look, that's the equinox guardian." She points to a magnificent, larger-than-life statue standing over the doors to the Solari temple. The statue is neither man nor woman, armored, and carries a shield with a radial circle pattern on it. Her spear is long and seems to emit its own light.

"Wow," Leona breathes, impressed. There was nothing like this in the Rakkor tribe. She turns back to Diana and presses on. "So what do you do instead of going to classes?"

Diana shrugs as she pushes open the heavy doors to the Solari temple and beckons Leona inside. "I dunno. I read a lot, I guess, and I go exploring all the time." She doesn't mention that her explorations are part of her method of coping with the loneliness when it gets particularly bad. "I've even snuck into your battle ring thing before," she boasts proudly to a stunned Leona.

"Really?" the brown-haired girl gasps. She frowns. "Hey! That's our Rite of Kor! Only true Rakkor warriors are supposed to watch tha...Diana. _Diana._"

Diana turns around as quickly as she can when she hears the urgency in Leona's voice. She finds the Rakkor girl staring, transfixed, at the equinox guardian. "Leona?" she yelps fearfully, tugging at the other girl's hand. "Leona, what's wrong?"

"Can't you see it?" Leona mumbles back dazedly, gazing blankly up at the statue. Then she blinks and the moment is broken. "Huh?"

"Tch," Diana grumbles. _Are all Rakkor kids this weird? _"You were staring at the equinox guardian. What did you see?"

Leona frowns and glances back at the statue as the temple doors close behind them. "I was?" she asks, and it's clear to Diana that the other girl honestly has no clue what she had been doing. _We'll just pretend that never happened,_ Diana resolves as she eagerly takes Leona around the outer ring of the Solari temple, forgetting that they were supposed to ask the elders for library permission. Leona seemed to have forgotten too, caught up in the majesty of the architecture and religion.

"Look, this is the room where the Keepers track the seasons based on the position of the sun," Diana explains excitedly as she shows Leona another room in the temple. The two of them scurry inside the antechamber, where the little Solari girl points at the complex crystal and mirror system set up in the Dial room. "See, there's a calendar on the ground, and wherever the sunlight shines on, it's that day." Currently, the fading afternoon sunlight is illuminating a day marked as the last day of summer.

The Rakkor girl's eyes are wide in amazement as she tries to follow the intricate patterns the sunlight makes as it passes through the crystals. "Wow," she breathes in awe. "This is amazi—"

"Diana? What are you doing in here, little one?" comes a voice from the door, and the two girls look up simultaneously with identical expressions of guilt. They realize they've completely forgotten about the original reason they came to the temple. Diana blushes furiously as she recognizes Elder Tai, the High Hall council member who has the ability to see into the future - the rumor is that the sun god granted him the power after he stared at the sun for seven days and did not close them for seven nights.

"S-sorry, Elder Tai," the little girl with the amethyst eyes stammers, ducking her head in respect to the smiling old man. "We, we were going to the High Hall to ask for permission for her to borrow books from the library, but we, I mean, I wanted to show her around a little bit." Diana flushes, embarrassed that she had gotten them both into trouble when she was supposed to be helping Leona.

"Oh?" Elder Tai, far from being severe, seems amused at how clumsy-witted Diana has become as he raises an eyebrow at Leona. He smiles down upon the two girls as he asks, "And who is your friend here? I don't seem to recognize her." His smile freezes in place as he stares hard at the Rakkor girl.

_Friend,_ Diana repeats, frowning as Leona answers the elder, bowing her head like Diana had so she wouldn't seem disrespectful. The unfamiliar term rolls around in the little Solari girl's mind - was this what it meant to have a friend? She almost gasps - what if she had let her friend down already because she had gotten them into trouble wandering around the temple?

"Ah, you're the little Rakkori who asked for permission to borrow _The Radiant Dawn_ a few days ago, aren't you?" the elder finally recalls, tapping his clean-shaven chin. "Very well - I see no reason for denying you the pleasure of learning, especially about our religion. I will send a missive to the library stating that you have full access to its services."

"R-really?" Leona splutters. "Th-thank you, sir!"

"Why don't the two of you continue the tour?" Elder Tai suggests, smiling gently at a surprised Diana. "If she wants to learn about the Solari, there is no better place than the temple. Right, little one?"

"R-right!" Diana squeaks, grabbing Leona by the hand with renewed vigor and pulling her to the next room in the temple at the peak of Mount Targon. "Come on, Leona! The next room is the room where the armor of..."

Elder Tai studies them very closely as they walk off. _It can't be,_ he thinks, but it is. He decides not to tell the council of the High Hall about what he suspects about these two children; after all, his "gift" of clairvoyance is fuzzy at best and completely wrong most of the time. Long after they are gone, he thinks about the two girls who have just met, and wonders if either of them know who the other is - or rather, who the other will be.

But for now, they are friends, and they are guileless.

* * *

**Keep an eye out for this story being published! In the meantime, I am continuing to write champion judgments. Stay cool and eat lots of ice cream, people! **


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